Of the twelve zodiac animals, eleven can be found in the world as real creatures: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig.
Only the dragon exists solely in totems, ancient texts, and legends.
Geological engineer Lu Chen has always wondered: Why did the ancients include a creature that never existed among the twelve earthly branches?
When he was seven, a mountain flood ravaged his village. A true dragon appeared in the sky and quelled the raging waters. Everyone in the village witnessed the miracle. But when the dragon’s breath swept through the valley, every witness’s memories were erased.
Lu Chen was no exception. All that remained was an obsession he could never shake, though he could not recall a single image.
Years later, his father, Lu Zhixing, mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a black iron keepsake box.
Inside were a bundle of yellowed exploration notes and a gray-white bone fragment that Lu Chen initially took for an ancient fossil.
The moment his fingertips touched the fragment, memories sealed away for twenty-one years burst open.
Only then did he learn that it was no ordinary fossil, but a fragment of dragon bone left behind when a dragon fell from the sky at Yingkou in 1934.
Dragons are real.
But every time one appears, it erases the memories of everyone who sees it.
For thousands of years, all who witnessed a dragon have forgotten, leaving the truth buried beneath mountains and rivers.
The dragon in the Chinese zodiac was not invented from nothing by the ancients. It is an ancient memory that survived in humankind, not yet completely erased.
To find his missing father and recover the truth that was wiped away, Lu Chen sets out with the only dragon bone left in the world, crossing the mountains, ravines, underground rivers, and ancient pools of China.
He relies on no occult arts or mystical techniques. Using only his geological expertise, he follows traces left in the strata and the earth’s veins, seeking the true dragon hidden from the world.
